Page 1 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed
CHAPTER ONE
“YOU DON’T HAVE to marry him,” Helene Archibald’s cousin, best friend, and maid of honor said urgently—and unsolicited—as they stood together in the antechamber of the cathedral.
Outside the small yet ornate little room there were the sounds of organs and a great many people and a grand regal destiny besides, but here there was only the two of them. And Helene’s astonishingly prodigious bridal train, pouring all over the old stone floor in a slithering cascade of elegant ivory fabric. Not to mention what had to be every flower in the whole of the Kingdom of Fiammetta, which had been nestled high in the Alps between Italy and France since the Dark Ages, as if to scoff at the frigid January weather with every bright and fragile blossom.
Her cousin, perhaps emboldened by the way her voice echoed between them and the flowers and the dour religious iconography on the stout old walls, carried on with a certain resolute passion. “Who cares if he’s a whole king? I’ll spirit you away myself.”
Helene found this sweet, and unnecessary, but found herself questioning the logistics of the claim all the same. “Would we run off by foot? Down all the closed-off streets monitored by the palace guards and, last I checked, crowded with well-wishers?” She considered, and thinking about an exit strategy she didn’t actually want was a nice change from standing about, heart rate alarmingly high, waiting to rush out into the main part of the church so she could then...walk. Very, very slowly up an acre or two of aisle to marry a man who was indeed a whole king in front of a crowd both in person and via all the cameras. “And if we somehow made it through, what would we do then? Dressed like this, no less. Would we clamber up the side of the nearest mountain and hope we could slide on our backsides all the way into France?” She gave the endless train a bit of a fluff so that it slithered out even farther across the stones. “In fairness, this might make an excellent slide. Assuming we chose the right mountain, that is. I hear some of these peaks on the Italian side are quite treacherous.”
Faith, lovely and loyal Faith, puffed herself up as if prepared to take off in an immediate sprint for the white-capped hills when, until today, Helene could not recall her soft and sweet cousin committing to anything more physically taxing than a saunter down to a sunny beach to lounge about beneath an umbrella. “Only say the word, Helene. I mean it.”
“I know you do,” Helene assured her. The organ music out in the main part of the cathedral began to climb and swell, soaking in through the walls. There was a sudden uptick in the sounds of muffled coughs and shuffling feet from the hundreds of elite and important guests. She imagined the King himself was already there, standing at the head of the aisle as if the flying buttresses had been arranged to highlight his glory, not God’s. They might have been, at that. She smiled, though inside her body, hidden away as it was in yards upon yards of white silk and ivory lace, something darker and deeper...hummed. “But I think I might as well go through with it, don’t you? Since everyone has gone to all this bother?”
“I hope that is one of your charmless jokes, Helene,” said her father, then, closing the door to the rest of the cathedral that she hadn’t heard him open. With his usual fastidious precision. Then he merely stood there, pinning her with that cold glare of his. “Of course you’re going through with it. This is your wedding to the King of Fiammetta, for the love of all that is holy. It does not require thought.”
What Helene wanted to say was, Not for you, Papa, I know.
But she had long since decided that there was no point arguing with her father. Herbert Marcel Archibald was slim like a wire, always vibrating with outrage and insult. There was nothing fruitful to be gained in debating him on any topic. The last time she had attempted it had been before her lovely, happy, bright beacon of a mother had died.
After Mama had gone, there was nothing to argue about. Helene did not expect her father to see her, much less know her, and he had not pretended to attempt either one. Instead, he had made his expectations for her excessively clear: she was to make a brilliant marriage, as, indeed, her own mother had done with him. Helene was to carry on this tradition of marrying up. She was to excel in all things so she might make herself nothing short of a shiny prize for him to barter away, the better to bolster his own wealth and consequence, as Archibalds had been doing for generations.
Helene had not exactly been thrilled with this fate, having harbored her share of dreams in which she imagined herself, variously, as an astronaut, a judge, and a mermaid. But she’d remembered the stories her graceful, warm mother had told her. Stories of princesses and castles. Fairy tales and happy endings that came from things like arranged marriages—much nicer to contemplate than the age-old games men like her father preferred to play.
She liked to remind herself that she could have rebelled, if she wished. Helene could have turned her back on her father and all his demands, but whenever the urge to do that rose up in her, she reminded herself that Mama never had. That she had stayed with Herbert and despite the obvious chill, had claimed she was happy.
I am safe and cared for, Helene had heard her mother tell Faith’s mother, her sister, long ago. Not all of us are made for passion. Some of us bloom more quietly.
Helene had decided, then and there, that if she could bloom as her mother had, that would be a life well spent indeed.
And it had certainly been a frosty half a decade since the cold fall day they’d laid her beloved Mama to rest, but Helene liked to remind herself that she’d chosen to stay with her father. To submit to his demands and expectations. To do the things she knew her own mother had done, in her time, and how bad could all that cold civility be, really? She’d grown up watching her parents freeze at each other, and her mother had called that a kind of blooming.
She’d started to consider herself an icy little rose.
Just say the word, Faith mouthed at her now.
Because her parents had married for love. Something they could do, Helene knew, because her own mother—as eldest daughter—had not.
“Come, Helene,” Herbert snapped at her, as if the ceremony was something he could do on his own. As if she was keeping him from his wedding.
“Yes, Papa,” she murmured, as she always did, shooting a smile Faith’s way.
And thought about her mother, who would have loved this day no matter how it came about. A cathedral. A kingdom.
An honest-to-God king.
Mama would have thought this was nothing short of a festival of blooming.
Helene took her father’s impatient arm, and let Faith tuck her away behind the overtly traditional veil no one had asked her if she wanted to wear. Herbert then led her, with all possible ostentation, to the great doors of the cathedral proper, where the King’s royal guard stood with expressions of great solemnity.
No one checked in with her. No one asked if she was ready.
Helene told herself that was likely because she exuded readiness, as was expected.
The guards waited for a signal from the palace aide dressed in finery that managed to look as capable as it did chic, who cocked her head toward what Helene knew by now was an earpiece. The aide spoke softly.
Inside the main part of the cathedral, the organ music swelled anew, into a piece of music that sounded so ornate it made Helene’s bones seem to ache inside her skin—or perhaps, she chided herself with a lot less of the drama she knew her father had always disliked in her mother, it was simply a draft from the cold winter’s day outside.
But when Helene thought of her mother’s most loved stories, the ones she had told time and again that were the most magical of all, she sighed a little. Quietly, there beneath her veil where no one could hear her. And decided to believe it was the music.